video games are good, except when they're not

April 7, 2016April 7, 2016

Day 98: Riddled Corpses

It’s easy to see how Riddled Corpses would grab one’s attention immediately. I mean, just look at the title. It’s like the name of a Slayer album. If that doesn’t get you, maybe you find yourself drawn to the tasteful yet provocative anime ladies on the title screen, none of which are ever seen again during the course of the game. That’s kind of Riddled Corpses in a nutshell, really – an interesting package that doesn’t particularly care to deliver on anything beyond the surface level.

Perhaps it’s a testament to the twin stick shooter genre as a whole that I had as much fun with the game as I did. Outside of some nifty pixel art, there’s nothing about it that’s particularly innovative. In fact, it’s a grindy slog, transparently so. You start the first level with a pitifully weak gun that barely does any damage, collecting gold along the way to spend on upgrades… well, one upgrade – a stronger gun, which will then get you a little bit further in the level which will then get you a little more gold and then a slightly stronger gun.

You will play level one approximately 6,000 times.

Again, twin stick shooters are mindless fun, so I didn’t mind too much at first. I had a lot podcasts to catch up on anyway, so I could keep myself stimulated during the grind. Eventually, I was tearing through hordes of enemies like they were nothing, one-shoting everything in my path and building up a huge combo… well, I would if the combo meter actually worked. No matter how many zombies you kill in quick succession, the game never seems to count past 2. Also, most of the powerups don’t appear to be functional, including all but one of the health ones. It is for this reason that I never got past level one. Well, that and the fact that I stopped playing once I realized the game wasn’t actually finished. I’m weird like that.

I had to double check to confirm what I’d already suspected about Riddled Corpses, that it was a Steam Greenlight game that apparently never got much in the way of patches. Looking at the change-logs, most of the post-release work focused on spelling errors and additional resolution support (none of which appeared to work for me). The most notable update made it so “when a BOSS dies, it is now much more impressive and cool”.

As I never managed to reach a “BOSS”, I’ll have to take their word for it. I’m sure it’s awesome.